U.S. Labor Market and Layoffs

Amazon will cut about 16,000 jobs in a new round of layoffs, senior vice president Beth Galetti said Wednesday in a company blog post, adding to the 14,000 positions the e‑commerce giant eliminated in October. The article says U.S.-based employees whose roles are cut will have 90 days to search for another position inside Amazon before they are offered severance, outplacement services and continued health benefits. The move underscores continued cost-cutting pressure across Big Tech after years of pandemic-era expansion, with Amazon now trimming headcount in multiple waves instead of a single downsizing. Labor economists and investor commentary online are already folding Amazon’s cuts into a broader picture of major firms leaning on automation and efficiency gains while insisting they are still investing in "strategic" areas like AI and cloud services. For workers and markets, the layoffs raise fresh questions about job security in the sector and how far the industry’s post-boom retrenchment will go.